Meeting Menu

Objectives

Several decades of observations have revealed the richness of the mesoscale eddy field in the oceans, especially in association with western boundary currents and the Southern Ocean. These eddies have a strong and readily observable footprint on ocean-surface properties that is conveyed to the atmosphere. Air-sea fluxes are influenced on the eddy scale. And at the same time, there is increasing evidence that ocean eddies have a cumulative effect on air-sea fluxes and can significantly influence the climate of the atmosphere and of the ocean.

The small scales of ocean eddies, however, mean that they are not represented in the current generation global coupled models used for climate prediction and projection (e.g., most CMIP6 simulations will be carried out with models that are not eddy permitting). In short, we have a process — atmosphere-ocean interaction on the ocean eddy scale — that is beginning to be well observed, that is potentially significant for the dynamics and climate of both systems, yet is not captured by our “workhorse” modeling systems. This raises two specific, and related, challenges that will be addressed at the workshop.

How to represent atmospheric feedbacks on ocean eddies in ocean-only models?

How do atmospheric weather and climate respond to the ocean eddy field?

Addressing both challenges requires improved observations and analyses of sea-surface fluxes and developing models that are capable of representing the observed relationships between ocean eddies and fluxes at the sea surface. This workshop will address the above two challenges in a coordinated way, such that results obtained from different models can be quantitatively compared and evaluated with observational analyses and coupled model outputs.

The overall goal of the workshop is to create a shared understanding of how ocean-atmosphere interactions at the ocean-eddy scale should be represented in climate models to improve climate prediction and projection in both the atmosphere and the ocean.

Participants

The workshop will bring together the oceanography and atmospheric communities. Meeting participation will be limited to ~50 attendees selected through an online application process. Those who are interested in presenting a poster during the lunch break must submit an abstract.

Outcomes

During the breakouts, the three working groups will address the outcomes identified above. In addition, the organizing committee, in coordination with the working group chairs, will share results with the broader community through a workshop report and articles for Eos, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, CLIVAR Exchanges, and/or US CLIVAR Variations.